I love this series

Who needs manned space flight when you can make such cute characters out of unmanned probes?

Random thoughts on waking up on the morning after nightmare night.

One of the peculiarities of the English language is that the word cider can refer to either an intoxicating liquid made from fermented pressed apples; or a non-alcoholic unfermented beverage of the same juice. Anything sold as cider in Britain contains alcohol. In North America, it is, more often than not, the other sort.

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One of the frequent topics of discussion in laboratories around the world is “How can we improve the gender balance of physics?”

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The Great and Polymathic Simon Singh is currently on something of a publicity drive to promote his book 'The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets' (just published in paperback). He was lecturing in my city a week or so ago, which being such a math-science-and-animation addict, I would have gone to, except I was out of town that day. But the details are on countless YouTube videos and blogs.

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Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie lay on the grass in the middle of a field of reclaimed prairie on the site of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, together with a group of the resident buffalo with whom they had just made friends. In the distance they could see the distinctive shape of the high-rise laboratory building of Wilson Hall.

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Pony names are a much appreciated and well documented part of the awesomeness of Friendship is Magic. It is, however, a little disappointing that this anglophone phenomenon does not extend much to other languages. At least for linguistic nerds like myself who take delight in repeatedly switching audio tracks to compare character names, and deciphering the logic of each rendering. In this respect, the Strawberry Shortcake franchise is rather more fun.

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Good to see Twilight getting involved with this debate:

‘Science’ Center Teaches Boys Rocketry, Girls Makeup. Internet Certain To Be Pleased

It's fun to flip through a dictionary and note how words are adopted by the scientific community to serve a specific purpose, often different from the original meaning, which is then misinterpreted by the outside world, in a way which spreads further confusing, but also popularises an abstract area research, and is then further hijacked by writers as literary device to achieve some quite different objective.

Confused? That was partly the idea.

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I just picked this up on Lauren Faust's Twitter stream. This is surely something bronies can get behind.

"All over the world, men are taking a stand for gender equality." Will you be one of them?

http://www.heforshe.org/

All of the mane characters make great role models for little girls (and boys). This was a key part of Lauren Faust's vision: to provide a cast of strong female characters, all very different, but each equally amazing in their own way...

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